Widespread Outage Hits Facebook and Instagram for Hours
A widespread technical issue disrupted the operations of Meta-owned social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp on March 4, causing frustration among users across Pakistan and potentially millions worldwide.
According to Downdetector.pk, a real-time internet and social media outage monitoring service, both Facebook and Instagram experienced downtime starting at approximately 8:20 PM PST and gradually recovered after a span of two hours. Users encountered difficulties logging in, sharing content, and refreshing their feeds.
DownDetector witnessed a significant surge in complaints during the outage period, pointing to widespread technical issues. The impact extended to WhatsApp, another Meta-owned service, with users facing challenges in sending and receiving messages.
NetBlocks, a cybersecurity and internet governance monitor, confirmed the social media suspension. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, NetBlocks stated, “Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads are currently experiencing outages related to login sessions in multiple countries; incidents not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.”
Meta, the parent company of the affected platforms, publicly acknowledged the issue, stating, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to fix the issue as quickly as possible.”
Services were back up after a more than two-hour outage. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone announced on X, stating, “Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue … for everyone who was impacted,” without providing further details on the nature of the problem.
The outage was among the top trending topics on X, formerly Twitter.
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